Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, 2021.
Written and directed by Radu Jude.
Starring Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia, and Olimpia Mălai.
SYNOPSIS:
Emi, a school teacher, finds her career and reputation under threat after a personal sex tape is leaked on the Internet. Forced to meet the parents demanding her dismissal, Emi refuses to surrender to their pressure.
The ongoing pandemic has demonstrably illustrated the perilous thread on which daily life tightrope-walks, a fact taken full satirical advantage of – though is hardly the only talking point – in Radu Jude’s (Scarred Hearts) provocative, daring black comedy Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn.
The onset of lockdown just as Jude was preparing to start shooting this project forced him to embrace practical restrictions in his native Romania. As such, most every narrative scene involving actors sees the entire ensemble cast wearing face masks throughout, while footage of the city of Bucharest depicts swaths of humanity going about their business while masking-up and social distancing where possible.
Referred to by Jude’s own intertitles as a “joke,” the film is divided into three portions, each highly distinct in form. But first, Jude opens his film with an assaultive barometer for the audience’s own predilections; a several-minutes-long video of a man and woman engaging in graphic sexual acts, which may well leave more demure viewers cowering behind splayed fingers.
But beyond mere shock value, this footage is entirely relevant; it’s a sex tape of our protagonist, a respected schoolteacher named Emi (Katia Pascariu), and her husband, which gets uploaded to the Internet and, predictably, ends up in the hands of her students. Soon enough pearl-clutching parents and school administrators convene to debate whether or not Emi should be allowed to keep her job.
And so we return to that tidy-yet-peculiar three-act structure. The first third of the film is the most observational, Jude training his camera on Emi as she goes about her daily life in Bucharest. There’s an inherent amusement in watching an actress saunter through the city amid regular citizens going about their day, a feeling that’s interrupted by something as absurd as an old lady walking up to the camera and unexpectedly quipping, “Eat my c**t!”
Beyond the upfront acknowledgment of the pandemic, Jude’s motivated camerawork often pans towards capitalist monoliths – billboards, corporate edifices, even a Paw Patrol bouncy castle – and juxtaposes them against more ruinous, uncared-for parts of the city. The meaning is clear, double-underlined by occasional verbalisations between citizens, such as two shoppers – one poor, one wealthy – arguing about class inequality.
Given that the pandemic had laid the gulf of inequality barer than it ever has been for many, there’s perhaps no better time for a work of meta-fiction to highlight the true gaudiness of capitalism, that the wheels just keep on turning. The slow, lingering takes of this opening reel do begin to wear on, but the point is profoundly made.
The second act, a half-hour intermission of-sorts, serves as an extremely bizarre A-to-Z collage of aspects of human experience, from addressing Romania’s own troubled past to, most strangely, showing a man dressed as a bull chasing a nude woman.
The sequence vacillates between surreal black humour and genuine didacticism, perhaps best hitting the nail on the head when covering “C for Cinema,” where it’s pointed out how film is used to reflect horrors of the real world too vile to countenance directly. Though this could’ve easily been a well-produced YouTube video on its own, it’s funny, fast-moving, and provides a thoughtful, dark travelogue of humanity’s history – and potential future.
The grand finale returns us to Emi, who faces a mock courtroom trial as school officials and parents meet to vote on her employment status. What follows is basically a play as Emi debates the issue with the masses, drawing attention to humanity’s oft-hypocritically puritanical attitude to sex, that sexual expression should be cloistered away and never discussed, let alone viewed in video form – especially if the participant is a “professional” person, no matter that they didn’t consent to the video’s dissemination.
Jude hammers his various points home ad nauseum by pic’s end, but as a treatise on the flimsiness of contemporary “decorum,” the line between porn and art, the utility of teaching, and even circling back to Romania’s own racism, it’s brashly effective. To spoil the ending that follows would simply be criminal, though rest assured, it somehow leaves a more brain-imprinting image than the explicit footage that kicked things off.
At 106 minutes Jude does outstay his welcome somewhat here, the more laborious, repetitive takes and points suggesting the easy possibility of shrewd trims. Even so, it’s easy to appreciate the effort, to create such a disarming social document of a unique period in human history, while also making broader points about the world away from COVID-19.
Radu Jude’s latest is at times exasperatingly uneven and overlong, but also divertingly audacious, and certainly one of the most unique Pandemic Films to crystallise as of yet.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more film rambling.